Creating Sparks That Last & All Things Relationships

How do You Stay Married Until “Death do you part”? Note: Today's post is an extract from @mrshillaryvance via Instagram. She is a Therapist, Coach & Educator. With her permission, I have paraphrased some poignant thoughts about long-term relationship commitment: So many people don’t really weigh the gravity of the FOREVER part or consider what it really means (or actually looks like) to love someone forever. A lot less people would probably get married if they did! But in all seriousness, marriage is pretty awesome and it’s totally worth it with the right person (but potentially disastrous with the wrong person).  I think it’s time more people weigh the seriousness of forever and start talking about the glossed over realities of what most marriages look like day in and day out (it’s definitely not always G-L-A-M-O-R-O-U-S). All this to say, marriages will have their ups and downs...the good days and bad days, the “I think you’re hot” and “I think you’re not,” days, but what rea

Breakfast With a View The point of this outing was to breakfast with a view. It began with a side of misunderstanding. A view we had, from a vantage point up in the clouds of the office block where James worked, what I hadn’t realized was that James had asked whether I’d like a bacon bun from a local cafe or a wrap from the office canteen. I opted for a bacon bun from the local cafe which meant extra time out of his work day, unbeknownst to me. Not only that, he carved time out of his frenetic working day to have lunch we me as well from a different vantage point overlooking the southern view from of his office block. He made time for me! I’m supposed to be making time for us. Which I am, but James proved to be more than willing to go the extra mile in making our dates superb!  I made my own way home after lunch, traversing the 40-odd kilometre’s via train, Metro and car once more. James took the sedate bus ride home later that evening with a demure driver happy to deliver his passenge

Goddess Frump I Have Silver Streaks in my Hair – Deal With It We'll take a Festive break here to celebrate ourselves. Have fun with this article I penned about frumps. 54 Years ago I had no hair, no teeth, couldn’t speak and I cried a lot. People loved me. Today, I have hair, I can speak and I cry only a little. People still love me. My hair has silver streaks in it – and those same people still love me. My teeth are crooked and tinged with a faint acknowledgement of a coffee addiction – still, people love me. My point is, I am a frump and I freaking love being a frump. I will not try to be anything else and people will still love me – for me. For who I really am. For my wrinkles and the silver streaks in my hair. The only expectations I have are self-respect. So long as I maintain my own standards of integrity I am brazenly me. Goddess Frump. That is who I am. It has taken me a long time to get there, 19 615 days give or take. I have spent approximately 28 245 600 minutes

Not Jurassic Park   Only into month 4 of our Date Year and I am already learning so much more about James than I ever imagined possible. Just because we are in close proximity to each other does not mean we know everything about the other – or ourselves for that matter. What you see and know about yourself from the inside is not what your partner sees from the outside. What I do know about James is that the ocean is his calm space. It feeds his soul. The forest is mine. That’s a fundamental difference you might think and it is. But somehow we have made it work for us. I like the ocean and James likes the forest but neither presses our Super Chill button.  From where we currently live, we have to drive an hour either way whether to sea or tree. However, I researched trail walks nearby and came across a State Forest not too far from our home at all. In my now-familiar rush to fulfil an expectation of enjoyment for James, I hurried us into what I was certain was the parking space for the

 What do your relationships look like? 💗 Romantic? 🎉 Exciting? 🌺 Spoilt? 👣 Grounded? Essentially we want our relationships to be all of the above and more. Evolving, growing, openly sharing our thoughts and dreams. If we are to make a long term commitment with the person we have chosen for life, we need to be able to evolve with the ever-changing environment of growth in our relationship; to be able to adapt and strengthen our bonds. ~ For an in-depth look into ways to grow with the changing landscape of love in your life, you can subscribe to receive a free ebook of my tried and tested strategies to improve my 35 year marriage remarkably.

You don’t have to spend a fortune on going out I am a board game enthusiast, James not so much. Our usual Friday evening modus operandi is a home night – a few light beverages, a home-made burger and end-of-week coma in front of the television. It is sumptuously relaxing – until it is not. Repetition creates boredom.  I declared Friday night Board Game Night. But not just any old board game like your run of the mill Monopoly, Pictionary or Trivial Pursuit  - although I would play any of those in a heartbeat. No! I wanted to play a board game that would entice Jonathan.  This game that I got my hands on was called Exit the Abandoned Cabin. For all intents and purposes we would still be trapped inside that cabin if it were a virtual reality game. It was so difficult to navigate our way around the cryptic clues that were given. There were symbols to recognize, numbers to extricate and riddles to unravel and between us, we simply could not get past clue number 2. It didn’t matter to us th

Serendipitous Second Date Sapphire blue skies from the shade of a giant tree February is a pretty warm month where we live in Sydney, Australia. In fact it’s an exceptionally hot month with temperatures hovering around 48C most days, but on this sapphire blue sky day it was a pleasant 30C or round about there. Jonathan and I had set our sights on having a picnic in a recreational area of the expansive grounds of our local shire; Fagan Park. A place we know and love. We could find a quiet shaded area to place our picnic rug and unwind from our busy lives. Yet, it was our busy lives that nearly stopped our outing. James had some work to prepare for the week ahead and as it was already Sunday, there really wasn’t much time left of the weekend. Frantically he clicked away at his keyboard hammering out the required data until he was satisfied with the graphs and tables represented.  Lunchtime was almost upon us and we hadn’t packed our basket because of the uncertainty of going at all. I ha

Tentative First Date Our first Date Event was to try to recreate lost memories. Trying to recall what it was I felt for James and how that felt on the inside. I opted for a lunch on our cultural cuisine. It was my hope that the tastes and flavours of our heritage might evoke the excitement of our younger dating days. As we had emigrated from our beloved South Africa 15 years ago, there were many occasions long lost to our past. Whilst I am a firm believer in not living in the past, I am also a firm believer in the fact that blood is thicker than water. The vast stretch of water that we had crossed to get to where we are today was not enough to erase the density of culture flowing through our veins.  The lunch that I chose to rebuild our hopes and dreams on is called Vetkoek. Not as in an animal doctor! The letter ‘V’ is pronounced with an ‘F’ sound. It is an engorged ball of dough deep fried and filled to bursting with savoury mince. Yes, we used to savour them dripping with melted but

 Let me introduce myself as well as my work I felt the need to shake things up in my marriage. My husband and I have been together for over 30 years; that's a Very Long Time to spend with the same person 24/7. Obviously, it can't stay deliriously happy all the time, those feelings wear down after a while, so it's important to find new ways of being. Well, that's what we did and I'm about to divulge our discoveries with you that I have written of each of our date events and what we learnt from each one. I anticipate that you will have lots of ideas of your own to share with us and look forward to reading them in the comments. Creating Sparks That Last - A Mid-Life Date Year Creating Sparks that Last - From Stone Age to Modern Age  Flint is one of the primary materials used to define the Stone Age. Access to flint was so important for survival that people would travel to obtain it. When struck against steel, flint will produce enough sparks to ignite. Flint is hampere

Heartfelt Feelings Before we began our Date Year Experiment, I had to find my heart, my feelings, the depth of my emotions. I wanted our relationship to be filled with love and affection again. I knew that it couldn’t be the same as before, simply because we weren’t the same people who had started this relationship together. It’s impossible to be the same. Life has happened, we have matured, maybe even grown skeptical. We still loved each other, just in a new way. So we had to find new ways to reconnect.

Enjoy Our Date Year Experiment With Us I would love to share the unexpected secrets of our date events with you. You will discover a whole side of your relationship that you never even knew existed. As did we. This will undoubtedly help you to uncover hidden treasures in your relationships too. From feeling resentful to feeling appreciated you will delight in these new-found feelings for each other.